H.P Lovecraft fandom grows locally

H.P. Lovecraft was born in Providence, Rhode Island in 1890 and buried there in 1937 when he died of cancer. He wrote horror under the subgenre of weird fiction and his work had been adapted into plays, films and games.

Lovecraft’s father died in an insane asylum when he was a child, so he grew up poor, but he could read by the time he was 3 years old and wrote poetry at age 6.

“He was a blend of a genius, but he was almost entirely self-taught,” said Andrew Leman, one of the founding members of the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society (www.cthulhulives.org).

Lovecraft didn’t have much of a formal education due to his family’s financial situation and his poor health. Instead, he spent hours reading books from his grandfather’s large library. Many of the stories he read later influenced his own work, as did his dreams.

“He experienced incredibly vivid dreams all through his life and many of them he directed and translated into his work. He wrote poems and stories that a couple of them he said outright, ‘this is what I dreamed last night,’” Leman said.

Fairly unknown during his lifetime, Lovecraft made little money with his own writing. He earned income as a rewriter and a ghostwriter for people like Harry Houdini.

“Ever since his death, his fame has only increased. He is now generally regarded as one of the most influential horror writers since Edgar Allan Poe,” Leman said.

His influence is far-reaching with authors Stephen King and Clive Barker, manga artist Junji Ito, filmmaker Guillermo del Toro, as well as musicians like Black Sabbath, The Black Dahlia Murder, Cradle of Filth and deadmau5 all attributing inspiration from the writer.

Lovecraft has also appeared as a character in works by Ray Bradbury and Robert Bloch and has been referenced in “South Park.”

Leman was introduced to Lovecraft in the 1980s through Chaosium’s role playing game, “Call of Cthulhu,” based on Lovecraft’s mythical world.

“He’s been growing incrementally since the ‘80s and it’s that pond ripple effect — the more people who learn about him, the more famous he becomes,” Leman said.

Leman believes Lovecraft’s style and theme are what have made him popular today.

“Lovecraft had his own style and very few people have successfully copied his style. He was verbose. He had a huge vocabulary and was not afraid to use it and some people think he was just overly decorative. His actual writing, some people love it, some people hate it, but nobody can get away from the influence of it because he is one of the people who invented the idea of alien creatures coming to Earth from another place and being mistaken for gods,” Leman said.

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“He’s also brilliant in inserting references to things that happened in the real world into his completely fictional stories that gives them a sense of verisimilitude, where you can’t quite be sure what’s real and what’s not.”

This ability to give the reader just enough truth to let his or her imagination go wild is what makes Lovecraft so effective, Leman added. Lovecraft studied science and now we often see something in the news that was in one of his stories, such as discovering life in Antarctica.

Lovecraft’s “The Lurking Fear” will be presented as a play during “Wicked Lit” (www.wickedlit.org) at Mountain View Mausoleum and Cemetery in Altadena through Nov. 2. One of his earlier works, it was originally published as a serial in the journal, Home Brew. Leman doesn’t consider it one of Lovecraft’s more compelling tales.

“Jeff (Rack of Unbound Productions which produces ‘Wicked Lit’) may have thought it was a good candidate for a theatrical adaptation because of its structure,” Leman said.

“Lovecraft was not particularly interested in the human characters of his stories, so doing a dramatic adaptation of any of Lovecraft’s works is usually very challenging because Lovecraft doesn’t provide you with interesting characters or dialog or human emotional arcs because that’s not what he was interested in.”

However, “The Lurking Fear” is one of Lovecraft’s more “human” stories and contains action as opposed to other tales that are primarily intellectual and have little or no movement.

If you are interested in reading Lovecraft, Leman suggests beginning with “The Call of Cthulhu,” “The Shadow Over Innsmouth” and “The Color Out of Space” (one of his creepiest stories, Leman said). There is also the H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival and CthulhuCon hosted annually in San Pedro (last weekend, Sept. 27-29) and Oregon.

“Although his style can take some getting used to, he can really set your imagination on fire and open your mind to a world view that’s pretty amazing and he’s scary.,” Leman said. “He’s definitely worth checking out because he has been a tremendous influence not only horror writers, but on pop culture in general. Lovecraft is really lurking behind everything everywhere a lot of the time and he’s definitely worth giving a try.”